David Peace - 1980

6:00 a.m. -

Monday 15 December 1980:

Millgarth Police Station, Leeds.

The room next to the Ripper -

The door open, the light on -

‘Helen?’ I say.

DS Marshall looks up from the file on the desk, a hand on her heart -

‘Peter.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you.’

‘No, I was miles away’

‘How long have you been here?’

‘Don’t know,’ she says, looking at her watch.

‘Couldn’t sleep?’

She nods.

‘Me too,’ I say, sitting down. ‘Who let you in?’

‘It wasn’t locked.’

‘Bloody hell.’

‘Sorry.’

‘It’s not your fault, don’t worry.’

She sits back in her chair, pushing the file away.

‘What are you looking at?’ I ask.

‘Well I got lucky, yeah? 1976.’

‘A quiet one. Favouritism from the Boss.’

‘People will talk.’

I’m blushing: ‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah, they’ll say you’re sexist. Specially if you don’t even let me precis them.’

‘Me sexist? One murder, one attack; Joan Richards and that Chinese girl? I don’t think so.’

She’s smiling.

‘And,’ I say, ‘I’m sorry about last night. But Bob Craven was…’

She stops smiling: ‘You know she’s dead?’

‘Who?’

‘That Chinese girl.’

‘Sue Peng? No, when?’

‘77. Suicide.’

Ghosts, more ghosts -

Chinese ghosts .

‘What?’ Helen Marshall is staring straight through me.

‘Said I didn’t know that.’

‘As good as murdered.’

We sit in silence -

Helen rubbing her eyes, me with that taste in my mouth -

I ask: ‘Have you had any breakfast?’

‘No.’

‘Want some?’

In the canteen we set down our trays on a table, the morning papers abandoned by the last shift -

Headlines hurting:

Ј 100,000 Ripper Reward .

Victim’s Mother in Ripper Plea .

Women Arm Against Ripper .

Ripper Telephone Threat Studied .

That playground taunt, haunting:

Ripper, Ripper -

Hunt, hunt ,

Ripper, Ripper -

Cunt, cunt .

‘Well, well, well. What have we here?’ says Murphy, joining us.

‘Sorry, John.’

‘Just stand me up, why don’t you?’ he says, winking at Marshall: ‘Watch him, love. He’ll make you all these promises; breakfast at Millgarth, dinner at the Ritz. Then not a dickybird.’

Helen Marshall is looking down at her plate, not smiling.

‘Good night?’ I ask him.

‘A quiet one with your mate Sergeant Bob.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah,’ he sighs.

‘As bad as it sounds?’

‘He’s an odd bloke, isn’t he?’

‘Don’t know. Last time I met him he was in Pinderfields Hospital, wires sticking out of him.’

‘Well they managed to rebuild him; just think they forgot a few bits.’

‘Like?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Just strikes me as odd.’

‘Learn anything?’

‘Well, he certainly isn’t modest, our Bob. Thinks he should have been put in command.’

‘So I take it he doesn’t think much to what’s been going on?’

‘Thinks they’ve wasted a lot of time. Thinks like us, they’ve probably had Ripper in and let him go.’

‘Any names?’

‘Not saying if he has; but he has his theories all right.’

‘Share them with you?’

‘No but I reckon he’s got his finger in a few pies, our Bob. Wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t on his way out; thinking of taking his theories with him, take them to the papers,’ he says, tapping the Yorkshire Post .

‘Spying?’

‘Oh aye. Course he is.’

‘Who for?’

‘That’s the question,’ says Murphy, quietly. ‘That’s the question.’

Helen Marshall looks up, nodding at the queue for the food -

Detective Superintendent Robert Craven is asking for extra sausage.

The three of us look at each other, eyes meeting, grins broad, laughing for a moment before we get up to go.

I stand at the door to the Ripper Room, catching the tail end of the morning briefing, the backs of a hundred heads before those walls, those walls with their alien landscapes of wastelands and buildings, tires and tools, of wounds -

The shallows and the hollows, the indentations -

The same shallows and hollows, the same indentations from the walls of my room -

My War Room.

Temporary Assistant Chief Constable Noble is telling the packed room: ‘So that’ll be press conference.’

There’s no cheer. ‘OK. Get to it.’

The room disperses, half of them pushing through the door past me, the others slumped back over their desks, back behind the piles and piles of paper that rise and tower from each one.

I wait until it’s clear and then go over to Noble, huddled with Alderman and Prentice and a couple of his other top men.

They all step back as they see me come, the conversation dead -

‘Morning gentlemen,’ I say.

Nods are all I get.

‘Can I have a word when you’re finished?’ I ask Noble. ‘I was coming next door anyway,’ he says. ‘Yeah?’ I say.

‘Yeah. Going up to Alma Road, if you want another look? Daylight?’

Another look? Daylight?

I let it go, face blank -

‘Thanks,’ I smile. ‘Appreciate it.’

‘Just room for you, mind.’

‘Fine.’

‘Meet you out front in ten minutes?’

‘Right.’

‘I don’t envy you,’ Noble is saying, as the driver pulls off the Ring Road and onto Woodhouse Lane.

‘I never imagined you did,’ I say.

We’re sat in the back, Dickie Alderman up front with the driver.

‘But,’ I add. ‘Can’t say I envy you much either.’

Noble laughs: ‘You wait. You will.’

‘How’s that?’ I smile, glancing at the concrete outside, the grey concrete stained black by the rain.

‘When I catch the bastard.’

‘Feeling lucky are you?’

‘Always. Give me a month.’

‘You should tell the papers,’ I laugh.

‘Piss off,’ he smiles.

The car slips into silence as Woodhouse Lane becomes Headingley.

As we come up to Alma Road, Noble suddenly asks: ‘How you getting on with Bob Craven?’

‘Fine,’ I say.

‘Why?’

‘Just asking,’ smiles Noble. ‘Just asking.’ That’s the question .

The car turns right onto Alma Road and pulls up in front of a parked Panda.

It’s raining heavily again.

We get out.

There’s tape around the shrubbery, the bushes.

We walk towards it.

Noble is stood next to me, squinting back down the road through the rain -

‘She got off the bus at nine-twenty,’ he’s saying -

Saying to himself: ‘Crossed the road and walked down here.’

He looks back to the other end of Alma Road -

‘Flat’s just up there,’ he says.

We stand in the rain before the bushes, Noble, Alderman, and me -

‘He come up behind her,’ says Alderman. ‘Hit her on the head and took her behind the bushes.’

No one says anything.

Alderman’s words just hanging there until -

Until Noble turns and we follow him back to the car, the driver stood under a black umbrella smoking.

Inside the car, I say: ‘Been fifteen months, yeah? Since the last one?’

Noble nods, Alderman turning around in the front seat.

I continue: ‘Makes you wonder what he’s been doing?’

‘We’re already running prison checks,’ says Alderman.

‘He’s not done time,’ I say.

Noble looks away from the window: ‘What makes you so certain?’

‘You’d have had him if he had.’